Nature Boy
by Lucky Meryl
Summary: Have you ever had a role model? Did they teach you well? Well, for one girl, role models can come in different shapes, sizes, reputations and pasts. He told her his story, and it made quite an impact. Songfic, implied romance and character death.


Have you ever had a person come into your life and tell you something that completely changes your views on everything? What was that person like? They were probably nice, kind, and known for being so. Well I'm here to tell you personally about how things aren't always so.

My role model, the man who made the biggest impact on my life, was a man by the name of Vash the Stampede.

I know you think it's stupid. I have a role model that was known as a human disaster and an act of God, but he isn't what people say, and I am one of the few who know that side of him. The only ones who weren't so shallow as to see what he truly is were children, along with the five most important people in his life.

But I knew the real Vash, I knew the Vash that deep down was still a confused, hurt, and heartbroken child. Not everyone could see that side of him, because most people are strong enough to break through the barrier created by his name, or rather his reputation.

Now I'm going to tell you something even more insane. I'm about to tell you that this man, Vash, wasn't even human. He was a plant. Yes, he was an energy source that we have used for years. No, I'm not crazy. He was a plant. He was, when I met him, 183. He was wandering over the planet we know as Gunsmoke trying to find new motivation after _she_ passed away.

There was a boy

A very strange enchanted boy

_She_ was Meryl Stryfe. She was the second important person that came into his life, but the single _most _important person he'd ever met. She was…kind, caring, temperamental, beautiful, stunning, terrifying…in short…perfect. At least, that was how he described her. The only other woman he'd loved was Rem, but she was like his mother, his role model, well, she was his everything in his childhood.

Vash had been followed by Meryl and her partner Milly for two years, on and off, but he didn't mind. After meeting them, they had suffered all painful experienced he did. Milly lost the love of her life, and Meryl had been abandoned by hers many times. Yes, Meryl loved him, and Vash felt the same for her.

He told her when she was twenty-five, and married her when she was twenty-six. They lived together for many years, until she was sixty-two, when her age got the best of her. It broke his heart, as Vash sat in his ever youthful form next to her frail weakening body. He'd prayed every day for someone to tell him some way that she could stay with him, but there were no replies.

After she passed, he wandered, seeing all the manmade creations he'd missed while being with Meryl, though none of them could match up to the beauty he'd spent 43 years of his life with. The new rivers and oceans that had been made with artificial weather and the plants that soon grew afterwards, meant nothing to him.

They say he wandered very far

Very far, over land and sea

He didn't talk much, but as a child, I had to ask him. "What's wrong?" for he always held unshed tears in his eyes. I then realized, that I was the only one to actually notice the emotions he held in all those years since _she _passed away. Nine years to be exact.

Once the words left my mouth, he instantly looked shocked that someone had actually spoken to him. But he only looked down at me and smiled, a hollow smile. I was only seven at the time, so I didn't mind the fact that he reached down and petted my head, messing up my hair. "Nothing kid."

I looked at him as he began to walk away. "Do you…do you want to cry?"

He stopped, turning around slowly, his eyes now brimming with tears. He looked shocked that a child at my age could actually sense such things, but none the less a bit grateful. Then he smiled, one that was slightly relieved, but still true.

He sat down on the bench near him and motioned for me to sit next to him. "What's your name?"

A little shy and sad of eyes

But very wise was he

And then one day

One magic day

He passed my way

At that time I didn't tell him my name, I just told him a fake name. He knew it too, so he asked me again. So I told him that at the end of his stories I would tell him my real name.

He told me some things that happened in his life that day, but refused to tell me more, because it soon got late. My mom was calling me in for dinner. "Sir?" I said, turning as I ran back towards my small house.

He looked back at me.

"Promise me you'll tell me more tomorrow?"

"Of course. If I want to you know your name, I have to finish my story, don't I?"

And that's how it began, he told me a few simple stories one day, and it soon became a ritual that we went and sat down on the bench in front of my house as he told me stories of his life. Every day he would shed another tear. Until the day he told me about _them_.

Wolfwood, Milly, and Meryl. That day he told me all the adventures that he went through with them. That day he shed man tears. He cried while holding my now fifteen-year-old body, his sobs racking his body, causing me to cry with him. I wrapped my arms around him as tightly as I could, crying into his hunched back as he cried into my shoulder, squeezing me tightly as well. We must have looked like idiots, sitting there on a bench in the middle of that small town, holding each other tightly crying in the middle of everyone, but we didn't care.

I was kind of glad to see him cry, because I knew that he was finally letting out his kempt emotions that no one else could get out of him. I still, to this day, wonder how a teenager could get those feelings out of him.

And as we spoke of many things

Fools and kings

Soon, his stories were over. It all ended too quickly, and he told me the last one the day before my wedding. I was twenty-six. My fiancé was a man I had met a little after I had met Vash, and the day he proposed, Vash was the first to know. Of course, I asked his approval. But he never really approved. He just told me that I would know if he was the right man.

The last story was one I would never forget. It was the most important of all. It wasn't even a story really, more like an answer. "Vash? Is there anything you regret?"

Then he just looked at me and smiled. "When you fall in love, your regrets disappear."

"And Vash?"

He looked back at me again.

"Are you leaving now that you have finished your stories?"

"I have to. You have your own stories to start. But I would like to know, now that I'm done…what is your real name?"

I just smiled at him, the brightest smile I could make. "My name is Eden."

He smiled back. "The name suits you." And then he left town. That morning I woke up, and I knew he was gone. But I didn't have the sense to cry, I just knew that he was only continuing his story.

I recalled his words he had given me that previous day. "When you fall in love, your regrets disappear."

I couldn't sleep that night, even though I was supposed to be wed the next day at noon. Little did I know that at noon, when I was should have been walking down the isle towards my groom, I was in the next town over, starting my own story.

This he said to me

The greatest thing

You'll ever know

Is just to love

And be loved in return

The greatest thing

You'll ever learn

Is just to love

And be loved in return

* * *

**_Note: So yeah, late night, got bored, wrote a songfic. What did you think? I think it is pretty good. And in case you didn't know, this was about Vash wandering the earth after his wife Meryl died. The facts were based some on manga and some on anime. In the Japanese anime, in the original language, he was known as an Act of God. In the manga he was with Lina for two years and at the beginning of the anime Meryl was supposedly 19. Therefore, four years after Vash got back with Knives, he confessed, the next year he proposed and thirty-six years later he buried her. Well, I hope you enjoyed my little songfic._**

**_DPA(Pyro)_**


End file.
